Chavez on the mend after cancer surgery

A supporter of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez wears a hat with an image of Chavez outside the national assembly while vice president Nicolas Maduro delivers the state of nation.
Photo: Reuters

Venezuela's vice president says President
Hugo Chavez
is making progress in his recuperation in Cuba, where he remains hospitalised following a December 11 operation to remove a cancerous tumour.

"We could say that our comandante is ‘climbing the hill, he's advancing and that fills us with joy from a purely human point of view’, but it also signifies great happiness for our country," Nicolas Maduro said at a session of Venezuela's Federal Council.

Just back from Cuba, Maduro said he and other senior officials met with Chavez on Monday to update him on the latest developments in Venezuela.

Maduro took the place of Chavez on Tuesday by delivering a short state-of-the-nation address.

Maduro submitted the report in writing from Chavez as opposition politicians argued that lawmakers should have postponed the annual speech because Chavez was supposed to deliver it.

Last January, Chavez spoke for nine hours before politicians even as he was undergoing cancer treatments.

Venezuelan constitutional expert Geraldo Blyde, a politician who sides with the opposition, said MPs should have postponed Tuesday's event.

He cited sections of the country's constitution stating that "only an acting president can personally present the report".

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Chavez, 58, who won another six-year term in the October 7 election, has undergone four operations, chemotherapy and radiation since being diagnosed with cancer in June 2011.

The president is progressing favourably, the Venezuelan government said in the latest bulletin on Chavez's condition, but still requires "specific measures" for a respiratory insufficiency caused by a post-operative infection.

Chavez had questions for all of the officials during Monday's briefing in Havana, Maduro said.

Maduro and the other Chavez confidants stayed in Cuba over the weekend and on Sunday met with brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, the respective former and current presidents of the Communist island.

Venezuela's Supreme Court ruled that Chavez, who first took office in 1999, could delay his swearing-in, set for last Thursday, without creating a constitutional vacuum and that Maduro may remain in charge during the president's absence.